OZ//2011

(Somehow).... I left this all behind and came home today.

Australia is an amazing place, and needless to say I'll be going back soon.

Huge thank you to all my friends and hosts.

Plenty more photos soon.

7'9 Stepdeck | Initial Thoughts

Took the stepdeck out for a maiden session today at 61st. Super fast and responsive, lots of potential and lots of learning to do. Really happy with how this thing planes through soft sections.

Cameron Oden Photographs

7'9 Stepdeck

I've been inspired by some of the midlengths that I've seen in the water recently. Cyrus has been making himself some fun looking 2+1 boards. I traded boards in the water with Knost a few weeks ago, and really enjoyed the midlength he shaped for himself, and I haven't been able to shake these boards out of my head.

With that in mind, Griffin and I put our heads together the other day to come up with something new and interesting. We started with the original log rhythm template as our foundation (21 1/2" wide log) We narrowed it to 20 3/4"

I really wanted to keep plenty of volume and rail through the middle of the board (50/50), but then transition to a modern edge in the tail. I don't really like displacement hulls, personally, but I do like boards that glide and trim effortlessly, so the extra volume is intended to make this board glide like a log, but turn and respond like a midlength.

We ended up pulling in the nose, because we agreed we didn't need so much foam up there for what we wanted this board to do. So we actually used the tail template of the Pinwheel model (longboard we did for Japan) for the new nose. In order to further eliminate foam in the nose of the board, we gave it a step. A nice heart-shaped step.